Thursday, September 5, 2013

If You Are What You Eat, I'm a Big-Fro'd Broccoli

I just want to take a moment for salad. Once you've eaten salad for lunch everyday for a week you can start feeling like your nose is twitching like a rabbit. I have found I sometimes need to take a break, come back to salad after a few days, and reset my mind. Another thing I've found is not all salads are created equally.

The salad I make myself is always the best salad.
When I've bought the veggies, cut them, tossed them, and then immediately eaten them it tastes wonderful! Grill some chicken on my George Foreman's and it's perfect. More often than not I don't have time for all that though.

I am a big fan of Farm Fresh's salad bar. In the middle of the day it's nice to get away from the office or I can get it on my way to work. All the veggies and toppings are pre-prepared and you get to be choosy of what you want on your salad. The only downside is none of their salad dressings are particularly low carb and therefore not the best on my diet. They have oil and vinegar which works but that gets old after a while. They do almost always have shredding rotisserie chicken that is very yummy.

Nothing kills my diet faster than being in a hurry. The area I live in is speckled with fast food places every few blocks so in that "I have 10 minutes to get where I'm going I needs something I can eat in the car NOW" feeling can easily be silenced by a burger and fries but I have found Wendy's has an awesome salad I can get down with.
The Chicken BLT Cobb Salad
Chicken, eggs and bacon? Hello, Protein! I'm a big fan of blue cheese, and then it has mixed greens and tomatoes. It comes with an avocado ranch dressing that is the real star. The dressing only has 3 carbs (2 from sugars) which makes it superb for me. The salad in total has 6 sugars and 14 carbs. My guess is the other sugars probably come from the tomatoes. Even though tomatoes have sugar they have so many other awesome benefits I think they are the super hero of the salad world.
A few other stats on this salad if anyone is interested: 590 calories, 24g protein, and 4g of fiber.

Salad's I don't like...
Chik-Fil-A and Tropical Smoothie. The chicken Cesar salad from Tropical Smoothie is not bad health wise just a little bland. Most salads from Tropical Smoothie have a lot of carbs and specifically a lot of sugar. Chik-Fil-A is the same way but they are also pretty high in sodium probably due to the breading on their chicken.

If you have other quick to-go salad suggestions please comment. I am open for trying more to keep the salad game interesting.